Please help me pick out a SSD for my Alienware

Hi everyone, I'm very glad I found this forum. I had been looking for a forum dedicated on computers and was looking for help with mine. I'm not very educated when it comes to knowing laptops and how they work and was hoping someone here would be able to help.

I have an Alienware M17x-R3
Intel core i7-2630QM [email protected] GHz and 8.00 gb of RAM.

My first question is will any SSD work on my laptop or do I need to buy a specific type? Do I need to configure anything once I get it? Is the installation hard? And which SSD's would you recommend?

I currently am trying to limit the amount of money I spend and would prefer it to be around 150-250 dollars if at all possible. I have an external hard drive that is 2 terabytes that is almost 99% of the time hooked to my laptop so space isn't that big of an issue.

I found this on Amazon but it says it is a hybrid SSD so I don't know how big of a difference it will make. Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Seagate 1TB Solid State Hybrid Drive SATA 6Gbps 64MB Cache 2.5-Inch ST1000LM014

Also what is the difference between the SATA III and II? Which one is my laptop capable of holding?

I know these are a lot of questions but I would be very grateful if someone was able to help me out!

 

First off: you want a modern/current SATA III model (the difference is huge between them... if a HDD is a bicycle, an SATAII SSD is a moped going downhill - but a SATAIII SSD is a race car when paired with a SATA III port connection as your setup has...).

Secondly, you don't want that Seagate (it is a sad little 5400 RPM model that you'll deeply regret; performance-wise).

Third, you need a 'big enough SSD'. That means that 120/128GB models are out - and even the newer Crucial M500 series at less than 480GB are out too...

Why do you need it 'big enough'?

1) To maintain the performance you paid for over time (sustained).

2) To keep the nand as healthy (and fast) as you can via Over Provisioning (OP) during GC and TRIM subroutines - not to mention just normal use of the drive too.

3) To get the maximum performance possible from today's SSD's with fully populated controller channels AND fully optimized/interleaved nand (the difference to a smaller capacity device can be huge when new/fresh and downright depressing when the SSD is 'used/steady state' - yeah; slower than a HDD...).

4) To ensure that your O/S, programs and 'free space' (minimum 25GB) on the C: is adequate in 2013 and also going forward for at least a few years.



Recommend a clean install of Win8x64 - along with 16GB RAM @ 1600MHz (yeah; this works on my similar HP platform) with NO OTHER DRIVES connected during the Windows setup.


You may also want to see this thread for a little more info:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/solid-state-drives-ssds-flash-storage/718208-asus-ux32vd-db71.html


See above link starting at post #2.


Hope this helps.


Good luck.

 

It is almost impossible to add to this ^^^ , but can you let us know how much space you are currently using on your primary or C drive? I have 2 internal hard drives and only use 30 GB out of an available ~75 GB on C. But I am fanatical about removing unused software, clearing temp files, not using hibernate, and use only a 1 GB page file. I would recommend against a hybrid drive becasue for $250 or less you can get a state of the art Solid State Drive.